China partially blocks search service, says Google

Internet Giant Google says that a certain feature in their search engine was blocked in China. This was reported last Thursday. The company said as it awaited Beijing’s decision on whether to renew its operating license amid tensions over censorship.

Joe McDonald of the Associated Press reported that users from mainland China were unable to use Google’s “suggest” feature, which offers possible results as they start to type a query.

AP also added in their report that when the suggest feature works, it may suggest to Chinese users a reminder that “tiananmen square massacre pictures” are available, but perhaps blocked, when they simply start typing the keyword “tiananmen.”

“It appears that search queries produced by Google Suggest are being blocked for mainland users in China,” Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in an e-mail. “Normal searches that do not use query suggestions are unaffected.”

Google services such as YouTube do get blocked from time to time, the new constraints are the latest example of the Chinese government using its power to make Google’s search engine a less convenient option on the mainland.

Google this week stopped automatically redirecting traffic from mainland China to its Google HK after the government warned the maneuver could result in the loss of the company’s Internet license in the country.

China is playing god against Google huh? Let’s see who will be really the big boss here. Will it be China or Google?

What will Google be without China? I think Google will remain Google. But, what will China be without Google? China has quite a number of resources, and they have plenty of “chinese” search engines. But Google gives all mainland users more information than their search engine.